ABSTRACT
Amnesia is a general term meaning temporary or permanent impairment of some part of the memory system. In Chapter 7 we discussed hysterical amnesia, which may involve forgetting an intensely stressful experience or even forgetting who one is (fugue). As we saw, hysterical amnesia is almost always associated with a need, conscious or unconscious, to escape from intolerable anxiety, and it is usually temporary—in due course there is a return to a normal state of memory. Sadly this is not the case with most other types of amnesia, where the memory defect is the result of some kind of brain damage.
